A problem which has been considered to be virtually unsolvable is that of providing apparatus with a practical keyboard so as to enable Chinese and Japanese characters, and the like, to be typed at practical speeds. At present, the Chinese language is represented by approximately 10,000 Han characters, and to be passably literate, a person must known at least 2,000 characters.
Linguistic and computer experts have been working on various complex keyboard arrangements and coding schemes so as to allow Chinese, Korean and Japanese people to use computers in their own language.
The major problem in producing a computer-generated Chinese or Japanese text, and in producing a computer-readable Chinese code, is that no efficient means has been developed in the prior art for entering data to select the symbols that represent the words.
As pointed out in an article by Robert J. Trotter in Science News (July 11, 1981), perhaps one answer to the problem would be to provide an optical scanner that could read the 10,000 Chinese characters, or the Japanese or Korean characters which are based on the Chinese. However, this is not possible with current computer technology.
As also described in the Trotter article, Wang Laboratories of Lowell, Mass. have taken a different approach to the problem. Instead of displaying thousands of characters on a keyboard, as is the case in the IBM system, the Wang system uses a coding technique, so that a minimum number of keys can be used to generate the 10,000 characters. Each character in the Wang machine has a 6-digit identification number based on the shape of the character. However, again, only specialized operators can develop the skills necessary to operate the Wang type of system with any degree of efficiency.
A system has also been developed at Cornell University by Paul L. King which uses a 12-digit keyboard to enter the 10,000 characters. Each digit describes a basic shape used in Chinese characters in one of four quadrants into which all the characters are divided. By selecting up to four keys, an operator can identify an entire character. Because of the complexity of the characters, however, the same four quadrants of different characters may be sufficiently similar to be described by the same digits but very different in meaning. When that occurs, the system uses linguistic rules automatically to select the correct character and, if the automatic selection process is not specific enough, the computer displays the remaining choices and the operator makes a manual selection.
In the system of the present invention, and as will be described, in a manner similar in some respects of the King system, a simple keyboard is used so that characters may be selected on a phonetic basis, but, unlike the King system, no attempt is made to form the characters on a quadrant basis, or to provide an automatic selection process. Instead, unless precise tones are selected, all characters corresponding to the phonetic selection initiated in the system of the present invention, but having different meanings, are displayed, and, in each instance, the operator makes a manual selection of the proper character from the displayed group.
In a system developed by IBM, high resolution allows for accurate video display of the complex Chinese characters, and an ink jet printer is used to produce 37 characters per second at the terminal. The system of the present invention is predicated upon state-of-the-art hardware and software, such as incorporated into the King and IBM systems, However, as described briefly above, in the system of the present invention, a standard keyboard is used in which the keys represent phonetically the consonant and vowel of each Chinese word. The system of the invention incorporates hardware and software similar to that used in the IBM and king systems to display Chinese characters when the keyboard is operated. However, unlike the IBM system, the system of the invention displays a number of characters corresponding to a desired word and its variants, each time the appropriate keys are actuated, and the operator then selects the proper character from the display so that the selected character only is transferred to the text portion of the display screen.
Thus, instead of the operator having to create or select the desired character from operation of the keyboard, as in the IBM and King systems, the operator actuates a standard keyboard to display a number of characters corresponding to certain phonetic sounds, and the operator selects the desired character from those displayed.
The Chinese language, for example, has thirty-eight vowel sounds, and the Japanese language has three additional vowel sounds. The Chinese and Japanese language each has twenty single consonant sounds, and three double consonant sounds (SH, CH, ZH). Also each vowel sound, and each consonant sound has five separate tones represented by the universal symbols -, /, +, and *. Purely Japanese characters are identified by the symbol @.
The system of the invention only requires knowing the sound of the word and representing it with a phonetic alphabet. Each word is broken down into three parts:
(1) The first part is 1 of the 23 consonants or double consonants.
(2) The second part is 1 of the 41 vowels or vowel types.
(3) The third part is 1 of the five tones.
The keyboard used in the system of the invention enables the selection of the three parts of a word by striking only 3 keys. Once the three parts of the word have been entered, the desired character along with any other characters having the samd sound (homonyms) will appear on the display screen. The desired character is then selected and entered on the text portion of the display screen.
If the user does not know the tone for the character which he desires, he can enter only the consonant and vowel parts of the word. This will cause up to 64 characters (representing all the different tones of the same phonetic word) to appear on the display screen for selection. The final selection technique from the displayed homonyms has been developed in the system of the invention for maximum efficiency:
(1) The homonyms have been arranged in the order of most frequent use.
(2) Two selection techniques are available: cursor control and 2 digit numbers.
If only one character exists for a particular phonetic word, it is automatically selected and entered in the text portion of the display.
The system of the invention allows entering of characters into text which can be stored on floppy discs in 20 page files. Each page has the capacity to store 768 characters. Once entered and stored, these characters can be printed or copied or merged with characters from other pages on the same or other discs.
Many features are available in the system of the invention to permit manipulation of the characters while preparing the text. Some of these features are:
(1) Shifting characters up, down, left or right.
(2) Rotating characters left or right.
(3) Exchanging and rearranging characters or lines of characters.
(4) Scrolling up and down.
(5) Marking characters in text and duplicating into text later.
Most of the languages of the world are based on the phonetic alphabet. The same letter has the same or similar sound from language-to-language with a few variations. Now in China, the students in grade school and junior high school are being traught to represent Chinese words with a phonetic alphabet. Chinese has many dialects. The wide acceptance of the phonetic word processor of the invention will tend to unify the Chinese language and bring China rapidly into communication with the Western world and into the computer age.